Injustice: Gods Among Us Review

Singleplayer content isn’t just comprised of this story, you can also play “Star Labs” which act as short missions that either consist of fights with certain win conditions and unique circumstances or entirely disconnected short puzzles like manoeuvring through a stage where projectiles are being thrown in your path. Each of these comes with three star ratings in execution, which for some will require hard work to get a perfect completion.

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Fighting games are about punching and kicking your friends at the forefront, though, and Injustice provides this, with some murky issues with character balance. Versus mode is great with certain match ups that play to each other’s weaknesses without feeling one-sided, but some of the match ups are just unmanageably unfair to a point where most of the game’s strategy seems to come from counter picking. The character Deathstroke absolutely dominates the distance game with raft of techniques dedicated to keeping characters on the other side of the screen - it’s nigh on impossible to get close using characters that can’t air-dash.

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Characters have a great amount of variety, though they mostly conform to your expectations. There are highly projectile focused people like Deathstroke and Green Arrow, Grapplers like Solomon Grundy and Doomsday, Rush-downs like Nightwing and Catwoman and confusing tricksters like The Joker. There’s a lot of work put into spectacle in the game’s super moves. Characters perform huge attacks that are indicative of their character traits and abilities, favourites being Flash running around the entire world in an attempt to build up enough momentum to punch the other player, Deathstroke pummelling his opponent into the earth’s core and right back out again or Aquaman... actually you should see Aquaman’s one for yourself.

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Injustice’s main point of interest and distinction is tying in the background to gameplay and providing reasons why you’d want to pick between one location over another. You’re able to interact with objects in the environment, meaning that you can kick someone into the Batcomputer or open up a water valve into their face. Along with this you can perform an attack that transitions from one scene to another. There’s a unique cutscene for doing this in every level. Some involve characters being crushed by harrier jets, others throw inmates from Arkham Asylum on them. The inclusion of interactive environmental content might also provide difficulty with balance as different sides of the map confer different advantages and it might be unfair in high-level competition, but they’re great to watch.

With some soft-bans on characters or dedicated work in not falling victim to cheap tricks, Injustice is a great fighting game that’s not only a lot of fun, but provides a lot of answers for problems with the genre. It’s accessible, it’s intense and it’s a great spectacle.